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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29471415">Stitch the World Back Up for Me, Will You?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavingBlack/pseuds/RavingBlack'>RavingBlack</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Separate Peace - John Knowles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic Fluff, Finny-centric, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, alternative ending, he lives</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:33:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29471415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavingBlack/pseuds/RavingBlack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Finny’s last scenes from his perspective and his struggle to reacquaint himself with Gene and with his new reality. Gene’s there to help him through.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gene Forrester/Phineas "Finny"</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world could swing a million light years off balance, and it wouldn’t matter as long as Gene moved with it. Because damn the science textbooks when the only authority I could believe in was Gene. If you asked me, I would say that Gene was really the center of the universe. </p><p>I’d like to imagine the thing around which the universe danced was probably some shiny blue marble. Gene likely kept it somewhere safe, probably in his pocket or underneath his bed. He hasn’t shown me yet because he hasn’t found the right moment, but I’m sure he has it.</p><p>Because when Gene readily accepted the ludicrous idea of a fake war and grubby old men counting money and lives at a round table in some steak house, it seemed as true as the sky was blue. That’s why it was startling to realize that when the center of the universe started to gravitate into the war, which turned out to be real, I couldn’t follow Gene and his blue marble in. That’s why it’s such a rude awakening to later find that my place in the grand scheme of things has been thrown galaxies out of orbit. To find that Gene left our binary system when I wasn’t looking. God, when did he move?</p><p>The blanket wrapped around me and the hands holding the chair were not products of Gene’s will. I couldn’t hear his voice, smooth and witty. I couldn’t hear the footsteps I could pick out of a million. I couldn’t feel his solid, vital presence at my side. He’s gone.</p><p>I could open my eyes. I could listen a little more closely. I could call for him. But I know that if he couldn’t meet my eyes in that charade of a court, if he couldn’t be the one holding me aloft, then he might as well not be Gene anymore. </p><p>Gene really broke my leg. That jounce was Gene stealing my balance just to watch me fall. Like I was some experiment of physics. My best friend.</p><p>How long? How long had Gene Forrester ceased to be my Gene Forrester? When had his quiet intellect turned into treacherous connivance? When had his smiles become grimaces? When had the love that I saw in him just become a projection of mine? Had Gene ever been what I thought he was?</p><p>Was I wrong?</p><p>As the boys below me begin our pilgrimage to Stanpole’s car, I have a funny thought; there may not be any blue marble.</p><p>#</p><p>I tune out everything as I’m transported from marble to chair to leather seat to infirmary bed. Phil Latham, Dr. Stanpole, and nurse Mary spoke and explained and lectured on and on in a language I couldn’t understand anymore. Up was down, left was right, and Gene was Mahatma Gandhi. Nothing makes sense so nothing mattered.</p><p>This burst of nihilism carries me through a conversation that I would have ordinarily trying to transform into a stand-up routine and spits me out when I hear a scrape and slip of shoes against the side of the building. I look toward the window.</p><p>My first thought—no, my first hope is that it was Gene. The purpose of his visit oscillated between a great explanation or a grisly murder, but I couldn’t decide between them. I see a shock of hazel hair in the lamp light, and it might just be him.</p><p>I can’t even recognize him. He’s so much bigger than I remembered. Bigger than me with all the running jumping I make him do. He’s dexterous, too, despite being that big. Like a leopard or panther, or some other massive thing built to kill me.</p><p>“Finny!” Even his voice doesn’t match. It’s too urgent and afraid to be Gene. He’s sarcastic, cool, and talented. He’s not this.</p><p>“Who is it!” I need to know this imposter. I grab my lamp, and it’s Gene’s face looking just like it did the first time he visited me in the infirmary.</p><p>“I came to—” </p><p>“You want to break something else in me!” The blankets and my leg elude me, thrashing around my body but not letting me free. I’m an easy target.</p><p>“I want to fix your leg up.”</p><p>“You’ll fix my…” Now, this was a particularly cruel trick. It sounds just like Gene. So smart and matter-of-fact and competent. It’s like he’ll really give me a spare he has lying around right next to a canoe that we’ll use to go rowing down Devon river again. It’s like some doppelgänger stole Gene’s voice, swallowed it, and started winding me up again. Just like it did with the fake war, the fake olympics, and the fake friendship.</p><p>I finally tumble out of bed, the tube in my arm pulling painfully, but I strain forward to confront the intruder. As much as my palms slap the floor and my weakened body struggles, I make no progress. I look up, and Gene’s looking at me with this dumb expression like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing: me, on the floor, trying to fight him.</p><p>A sense of shame begins to prick at me for my wild physical ambitions and flights of fancy. Of course, that’s Gene. There’s no imposter. I lower my head to the floor as embarrassment mixes in with my confusion. I can’t be making more wild stretches of imagination to cover the holes in reality. I’m what’s unaligned with the world. The Gene in my head simply wasn’t an accurate depiction.</p><p>To confirm that realization, Gene blurts out three successive apologies. An unnatural phenomenon for someone I thought that wasn’t given to great bursts of emotion. Then, he watches as I clamber back in bed, not moving once to help me. My humiliation compounds on itself realizing how sorely mistaken I was about the truth of our relationship.</p><p>He slips out.</p><p>#</p><p>Dr. Stanpole informed me that someone was coming to deliver my things, and I quietly waited for Gene to come, not needing verbal confirmation that it was him. Of course, it was him. It could be no one else.</p><p>I hadn’t a wink of sleep. I couldn’t when I had to redraw my world, starting with Gene. And if I wanted to reorient myself, I needed to know one thing. Did Gene ever feel a trace of what I felt?</p><p>In preparation for his visit, I stripped my shirt off—I always ran a little hot—and flipped through a magazine. I always disregarded text because they never made too much sense to me, and even less in Latin, so they became my very last source of credible knowledge of the world. Other than if Gene thought they were worth something. However, I don’t think I’m in a position to be assuming old prejudices, and I figure it’s about time to reconcile the English alphabet to my eyes.</p><p>The familiar bits greet me: the pictures of candid officers and muddy infantry. Then, the words reconstruct those pictures for me. More on Hitler’s unfavorable position, the quick mobilization on Japan, and the growing chances of America’s victory cover the page. Then, an ad for skin cream.</p><p>There’s a knock. Three simple raps. Gene lets himself in. I flip past the advertisement.</p><p>“I’ve brought your stuff.” He’s quiet. Scared, I’m assuming. Like the first time we were in an infirmary. Minus the drugs.</p><p>Damn those drugs. I can barely remember a thing. I couldn’t even remember how Gene made me fall because I was out of my mind with painkillers afterwards. Neither could I clearly remember how disheveled and flighty he was—pale and sick as me.</p><p>I direct him to place my suitcase on the bed, and he complies. I toss aside the magazine and its vapid contents to take a look at the real items of significance. I pop open the thing and meet Gene’s considerable organizational skills. It’s not as if he was very meticulous with how he arranged his things, but he was neater than I and most others. He applied his skills with greater care to my items, it seemed.</p><p>The items rushed over into the infirmary with me consisted of a frantic mess of shirts, pants, and a pair of shoes. The suitcase holds the overlooked items and toiletries. Gene gave me some extra clothes that weren’t plain, dull colors because I hated those, some freshly cleaned underwear even though I remembered I was running out before this, a few pairs of socks that assumed I would be walking about school in my condition, and some soaps that I didn’t recognize alongside my own. They were his. Then, there was my toothbrush and razor stored neatly in a box even though I always left them lying around for Gene to complain about the plain danger of.</p><p>Next, I see my hair brush that Gene always mixed up with his, and I’d complain about how much he sheds, and he wouldn’t seem to care but would clean it every time he used it. I reach for it, but my hands betray me, shaking too hard to grip the wooden handle.</p><p>His voice continues to mirror the nervous energy that always accompanies any matter involving my injuries. “Finny, I tried to tell you before, I tried to tell you when I came to Boston that time—” </p><p>I know this, and I tell him so. The only problem is that I can’t interpret Gene for the life of me. Is he trying to pull the wool over me? Is he trying to apologize? I move onto another topic of interest. “What’d you come around here for last night?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” That makes two of us. I watch him wander to the window, clutching the sill like he did when he was clawing his way into my room earlier. He releases it. “I had to.”</p><p>Gene’s jaw works and flexes as if chewing his next words like a tootsie-roll. “I thought I belonged here.”</p><p>So, I was right about one thing. Gene also felt that gravitational pull between us. It wasn’t just in my mind. However, the small victory doesn’t console me. There’s too much more to know, and this visit certainly won’t satisfy me. Especially with a war fast approaching to tug Gene away and mutilate everything familiar to me.</p><p>I punch the suitcase. “I wish to God there weren’t any war.” Everything would be fine without the thing. What is a war anyway? Why does Gene and everyone else belong there, and I don’t?</p><p>“What made you say that?” He seems surprised at my animosity.</p><p>My only objective is to first locate Gene and I’s place in the grand scheme of things, and the monumental task isn’t made easier with all the fuss about a war that I can’t even participate in. “I don’t know if I can take this with a war on. I don’t know.”</p><p>“If you can take—”</p><p>“What good are you in a war with a busted leg!” I burst, that old bitterness rising in me to rear its head for the second time.</p><p>Gene reaches for a consolation or alternative, just as I did so many months before, and I walked him to their fruitless ends. All those letters told me I can’t do anything if my body isn’t able to. This is something I already knew, and the training for the ‘44 Olympics was a product of that. I used Gene as a third crutch to do what my body can’t because if I can’t fulfill my greatest plots and stunning plans, then someone had to. And the only person I could entrust that responsibility to was Gene.</p><p>But the war was different because I couldn’t come with Gene. No one would let me enlist anywhere. This was something entirely out of my reach, and I wasn’t used to being so powerless. If I wanted to go to war, I needed an able body, which I’m coincidentally fresh out of. Being helpless felt like such a conspiracy, such an unlikelihood that cooking up a fake war felt like the natural conclusion.</p><p>As I reached the conclusion of my endeavors to join all my peers into war, Gene’s voice breaks on my name in a way I’d never heard. “Finny.” He then uses my full name. “Phineas, you wouldn’t be any good in a war, even if you hadn’t broken your leg.”</p><p>I’m amazed at this observation but even more so at Gene’s execution of it, like he didn’t want me in the war. He went on to explain with a bit of exaggeration how he’d predict I’d do in a war in a great ramble that was alarmingly thought through. He saw war differently than I did. Where I saw just another stage of our lives—exciting and maybe a bit unpleasant—he saw it as this place of fear and horror. His opinion makes even more sense when considering he visited Leper, who seemed to have changed drastically from when I saw him last.</p><p>More importantly, I detected a great deal of concern for me throughout his speech. The more he talks about me, the more flustered he gets, and he unravels even further when he hits upon the very idea of me going to war. He didn’t want me in that horrible place making “a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war.”</p><p>Seeing all these foreign emotions and hearing these new voices strikes an understanding in me. To see Gene so thoroughly unraveled like I’ve never seen before on my behalf, to be so affected…</p><p>I see now. My worst fears are alleviated, and both guilt for having ever suspected Gene and the relief of having an answer crashes down on me with the full weight of my tears. “It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in the tree there, you didn’t know what you were doing. Was that it?”</p><p>“Yes, yes, that was it. Oh that was it, but how can you believe that?” He repeats the question in a rush of utter shock and palpable relief at finally being understood. I can only imagine how he’s felt for so long. “I can’t even make myself pretend that you could believe that.”</p><p>“I do, I think I can believe that. I’ve gotten awfully mad sometimes and almost forgotten what I was doing,” I confess sheepishly. I continue to reiterate my point. “Then that was it. Something just seized you. It wasn’t anything you really felt against me, it wasn’t some kind of hate you felt all along.” The words are coming out in a rush, and I pause, waiting for Gene to interject and correct me. He doesn’t, and I finish, “It wasn’t anything personal.”</p><p>“No, I don’t know how to show you, how can I show you, Finny? Tell me how to show you.” He pushes a hand through his hair, desperate to prove something that doesn’t need proving. I can have faith in my best friend. “It was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that’s all it was.”</p><p>I nod fervently, feeling my world stitch itself back together with Gene’s every word. It’s true; I can feel it. Gene was my best friend all along, and he loves me like I love him. I can’t believe Gene. I can’t believe he could have given me the best outcome possible even though it never happens like that even though it should. But I do believe him, and I weep with joy. “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you. You’ve already shown me and I believe you.”</p><p>#</p><p>A few hours after Gene leaves the room, I enjoy my newly invigorated surroundings with a sense of gratitude. Everything is behind us now. I can envision the Summers ahead once Gene returns from the war, and I get to walk again. There’s no business of a jounced limb, surprise court trials, and broken legs to be had anymore. All except for one, though.</p><p>Dr. Stanpole carts in an array of metal tools to poke and prod my insides with. I’m surprised I can find the energy to bother him on their uses, and he obliges me with his plentiful medical knowledge.</p><p>“You’re in greater spirits, Phineas.” He reorganizes his tools after taking some time to display them for me. “A visit from your pal cheered you up, is that right?”</p><p>“My best pal,” I corrected.</p><p>“I’m glad.” He lowers me down onto the table and pulls up my sleeve. He pushes the syringe until a bit of fluid drips out. He sticks my arm. “How was the visit?”</p><p>“Great, doctor. You see, Gene’s been my pal since I came to Devon, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell why he stayed my friend. Of course, he never had a choice, being my roommate and all.” I politely waited for Dr. Stanpole to finish chuckling before continuing, and my eyes start to feel heavy. “I looked at him, the genius introvert that he is, and thought that I should see if he rubs off on me or if I can rub off on him. See if his brains and my athletics could add up and make something amazing... I think we hit off pretty well doctor.”</p><p>“I had a friend like that, too, when I was your age.”</p><p>I didn’t peg Dr. Stanpole to be a liar. No one has what Gene and I have. No one else had the wonderful world that Gene and I had, isolated from the dangers of an all-boys school. No one else experienced this brilliant turn of events. No one else had this separate peace. “I couldn’t believe it; it was right out of a fairy tale.”</p><p>My eyes slip closed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Older!Finny and Older!Gene. They live together now, and all of the struggle with communicating their romantic feelings to each other are more or less behind them. With the exception of Finny’s nightmares.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I jump out of my sheets, chest burning and leg throbbing angrily. A flood of memories and sensation fill my head too fast and too much until it feels like I’m about to burst. I clutch at the scar on my heaving chest. Two independent yet interrelated feelings work together to tear it apart: a phantom pain searing down my chest from a surgical cut and a monstrous bloating of fermented anxiety and fear. </p><p>My leg flashes red with pain, nerves scorched and begging for relief, and I start crying and gasping because it’s excruciating and must be broken again. I reel in the dark, looking for something, anything to orient myself with and find nothing but suffocating blankets which add onto the panic. </p><p>Until I feel an arm tighten around me.</p><p>My mind trips over itself at this fact and realizes it’s Gene. My eyes correct themselves through my tears and see him sleeping wrapped about my waist. I focus on Gene’s touch and work my way out from there.</p><p>It’s our house, and these are our blankets, and this is our bed. My leg still works, and my chest is healed over although both pulse with lingering pain. I gather up the blankets and hug it as I recoup.</p><p>I woke up from the surgery for my last broken leg with a big cut in my chest inside a hectic operation room. Apparently, some of my own bone marrow slipped in my blood and plugged up my heart. Dr. Stanpole cut my heart open, fished around until he pulled something out, and zapped my unbeating heart awake.</p><p>Afterwards was a trail of doctor’s appointments, physical therapy, and one more operation to correct some of Dr. Stanpole’s mistakes. I was relocated to a hospital in Boston for more intensive care, and my education at Devon was put on pause.</p><p>I had a few phone calls, all of them being from school except for one from my parents who were concerned but reassured they were paying for the best care. I had two visits. One from Dr. Stanpole, who apologized profusely even though he saved my life. He went away sweating and shambling but visibly relieved. The last from Mr. Patch-Withers. Just to check in.</p><p>Not one letter from friends. Not one from Gene. I knew it was because there was a war on and by the time I was available for visiting they were deployed to war. No one had time to write letters or visit when they had to assault Japan or invade Berlin, and mailing was always a mess when I was constantly carted from room to room when my health complicated or improved, and they were states away defending the country.</p><p>Yet, the boredom and unfamiliarity gnawed at me with all these reasons. Time blurred, and the faces melted into uniform blobs. The doctors and nurses changed too much to get attached to me or I to them, and the patients were always older rather than younger. I had no way of knowing if the people I knew were alive or dead. If the Devon I went to still existed. If the Gene I loved still loved me.</p><p>The same thorns prick me today.</p><p>“Finny,” Gene mumbles. “What are you doing up?”</p><p>I can’t find it in me to respond in an appropriate way. I don’t know if the sleepy, concerned voice is true or not. I hate that I have to guess because I should know by now, but I have a long history of contorting my imagination fantastically. Gene loving me definitely seems like something my brain would invent. Gene delights me, but he makes me so happy I can’t tell anymore whether any of this is real.</p><p>“Finny.” He nuzzles into my waist, sticking his cold nose into my side. “Lay down.”</p><p>I don’t. My mind is telling me to leave, to get away and stop making Gene play house for my sake, but a part of me doesn’t want to leave Gene’s embrace. I’m stuck frozen there.</p><p>Gene senses this internal strife, as it has happened more than once and I’m ashamed it has, and rises out of his own sleep to meet me. I lean away from his touch, but he kisses my shoulder anyway. “Finny, what did you dream about?”</p><p>That voice breaks me every time I hear it. The one melting across the words, sweet, lazy, and abominably domestic. “You.”</p><p>“In Devon?”</p><p>“In Devon.” The tears drip down again. I’m still crying even though I’m an adult already for Christ’s sake. I apologize, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m pathetically crying after a nightmare or I’m forcing him to be in this relationship or it’s because I keep doubting how he feels when he’s proven it over and over. “I’m sorry, Gene. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“Finny.” He pushes me into bed—into our bed—and kisses the corner of my mouth. His next words are so easy and free it destroys me. He breathes, “I love you.”</p><p>“Gene,” I choke. It will always feel like the first time he said it, and maybe in this way my mind is a blessing. I’ll always cherish every syllable of affection from Gene’s mouth.</p><p>“I love you.” He keeps saying it over and over like successive blows murmured into my skin. “I’m here because I love you like you love me.”</p><p>“I love you, too. So much, Gene.” I clutch at his shoulders, feeling terrible for these constant fears and doubts about Gene. “I’m sorry I can’t remember that you love me, too. Please forgive me.”</p><p>“Don’t apologize; I’ll tell you as many times as you want.” He smiles into my arm. “You know, I came home just so I could do this all day.”</p><p>“That’s a lie. You didn’t feel that way about me until a few years ago.”</p><p>“Well, I came home because I love you, didn’t I?” He kisses me full on the lips and then melts back into his pillow. “It’s all because I love you. Let’s just leave it at that, Finny.”</p>
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